Washington – As District of Columbia police investigate NBC News' David Gregory for apparently holding up a restricted high-capacity magazine on his weekly Sunday show, the police department claims NBC was told in advance that the prop was "not permissible."

Gun laws in the nation's capital generally restrict the possession of high-capacity magazines, regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. Gregory, on "Meet the Press," held up what he described as one of those magazines during an interview with National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.

That incident has since led to an investigation. And Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump claimed Wednesday that NBC sought permission ahead of the show, and was denied.

"NBC contacted (the Metropolitan Police Department) inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment. NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated," Crump said in a written statement.

While interviewing LaPierre for Sunday's program, Gregory held an object, apparently as a prop to make a point, and said it was a magazine that could hold 30 rounds.

"Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn't it possible if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, `Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,' isn't it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?"' Gregory asked, referring to the December 14 mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.

LaPierre replied: "I don't believe that's going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that even if you had that" ban.

The typical chimp at your local zoo knows more about quantum theory than your typical professional journalist/gun control advocate knows about guns (Yes, I repeat myself).

Bullets are the projectiles that actually exit the muzzle of the weapon (The pointy end, for you professional journalists out there). The individual unfired round of ammunition that includes the bullet, casing, powder charge and primer is more properly referred to as a cartridge.

I'll never forget doing a psychiatry rotation when we as medical students were invited to listen to an interview of a teenager with diagnosed boderline personality disorder.

It was quite chilling listening to him describing with glee in his eyes a scene from Rambo (I never could sit through the entire movie so I never verifed the scene) when Rambo holds his huge knife blade up to someone's throat and said, " I can kill you anytime I want".

This kid then stated, "I think THAT is the coolest thing I HAVE EVER SEEN!"

I don't want a ban a guns but if it does happen, damnit, we need to censure Hollywood and tax the shit out of the entertainment hypocrits who deliver huge quantities of endless violence, sadistic, gore and thrive quite well doing so.

Borderline? Odd diagnosis for someone who sounds clearly Anti-Social. Borderlines are usually self-destructive, usually female, hallmarked by drug abuse, promiscuity and instable interpersonal relationships jumping from idealization to devaluation......Their violence is usually self-directed OR turned directly toward the person closest to them.......Now if he was self-cutting after his boyfriend left him, i'd think it was BPD. But that's just from the small description of his statement, that may be no indicative of his overall behavior.......But the statement is definitely not prototypical BPD.......That's best summed up with the classic 'I HATE YOU.....Don't leave me!'.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, it's hard to take the idea that violent media makes people violent when violent crime and homicide rates have been on the decline for over 25 years to the point that they are now nationwide below Pre-1960 levels. Logic would dictate MORE violent media, MORE violent video games, would lead to MORE violent crime, if there is a causal link........but the opposite seems to be the trend.

That also goes for guns and gun laws.......With MORE guns, MORE guns being carried, MORE shall-issue CCW laws, MORE CCW holders.........Homicides have been on the decline in the US nationwide.........Even mass shootings have seen a slight decline over the last 40 years.

These mass shootings are likely tied to another psychiatric phenomenon, however, and that is Aspergers syndrome/Autism spectrum disorder..........Which seems to be a consistent diagnosis among the vast majority of these shooters, more than a coincidence, but given the statistical anamoly of these events, one should not throw them on to the multitudes of those with Aspergers who are violent to no one. It does seem statistically significant, however.

...given the statistical anamoly of these events, one should not throw them on to the multitudes of those with Aspergers who are violent to no one...

Cherry picking my excerpt for agreement. ) Disorders and syndromes like Asperger's are defined so vaguely or broadly (MHO) that drawing a connection to mass shooting I agree is a "statistical anomaly". I find the so called personality disorders to be more in the direction of Psychopath, but only extreme cases.

Much unknown and much to be learned about mental health. Far more helpful than studying guns.

"Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 849, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35-36, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, 2792*2792 prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding." D.C. v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2791-2792.

"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." --Recommended Bill of Rights from the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

Now it is the advertisers and readers of a New York newspaper who are caught in the crossfire, after its controversial decision to publish the names and addresses of gun owners in its community.

The initial story by the Westchester Journal News on Dec. 22 prompted a bitter backlash by gun advocates, who published the names and addresses of some of the newspaper’s staff. Since then, supporters and critics of the newspaper's controversial stand have been taking potshots at each other in a near-daily exchange that has drawn national attention.

"The Journal News has made no credible case, nor offered any valid reason, for releasing the data."- New York State Rifle & Pistol Association

“The data posted also includes active and retired police officers, judges, battered and stalked individuals, FBI agents, and more," the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association said in a release that marked the latest escalation. "The Journal News has made no credible case, nor offered any valid reason, for releasing the data, and it serves no investigative or journalistic purpose. It merely invites harassment and burglary.”

The association is calling for a possible boycott of the Gannett-owned newspaper's national advertisers. But the paper isn't just worried about suffering economic harm. On Dec. 28, it began posting armed guards outside one of its offices, according to local police, shortly after a blogger published the names and home addresses of the 50 journalists who worked on the interactive map showing who owned legally-registered guns.

And the battle shows no signs of subsiding. Hackers claim to have broken into the Journal News' online subscriber database and say they're circulating passwords and user information for 10,000 account holders. They have also made online threats to publish the home addresses and phone numbers of executives at the newspaper’s major advertisers.

One New York lawmaker said he plans to introduce legislation making it illegal to obtain gun permit holders’ information through Freedom of Information Act requests, which is how the Journal News obtained the permit holders’ information used to create their controversial online database.

“The Journal News has placed the lives of these folks at risk by creating a virtual shopping list for criminals and nut jobs,” said Republican State Sen. Greg Ball, in announcing his intent.

There is one apparent beneficiary of all the controversy: The paper's competitor, the Rockland County Times, claimed in an article to have seen an "influx of new subscribers who stated they canceled their subscription to the Journal News due to the gun story.”

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

Not that I am advocating the illegal activity, just posting as possible confirmation to the article I just posted.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Group claims hacked subscriber database of NY newspaper which published gun permit mapPosted by William A. Jacobson Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 8:05pm The Lower Hudson Journal News, a Gannett newspaper, caused controversy when it published a map of names and addresses of gun permit holders, and announced that it planned to do so again. The plan for further publication may be in doubt as a neighboring county just announced it was denying the Journal News access to its gun permit database.

In protest, bloggers posted the home addresses and telephone numbers of Journal News editors and staff. Also cirulating was the personal and family contact information for the Chairwoman of Gannett.

The Journal News has hired armed guards for its offices, according to Politico, because of threats.

This privacy war has just escalated dramatically, as a group of self-described ”2nd Amendment supporters” claims it has downloaded and posted on the web what it describes as the “user” database of the Journal News.

Twitter users claim the list is being widely circulated. Although the links are easily available, I’m not including links to any of the websites containing the alleged database for the same reason I did not provide the personal information sent to me about Gannett’s Chairwoman.

At least two tweets (only one of which is imaged here) disclosing this development were copied to the Journal News account, @lohud:

Twice today I reached out to the Publisher and Editor of the Journal News, asking whether they were aware of this, whether they verified the information, what they were doing about it, and what their position was. This obviously is important because the users and subscribers of the Journal News website may not be aware that their personal information has been compromised.

Despite being told by a person in the newsroom that the Editor was checking her emails, I have heard nothing from the Journal News.

+870

47 Comments 2nd Amendment

« Last Edit: January 02, 2013, 01:20:57 PM by Robertlk808 »

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"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

Who Pays for the Right to Bear Arms?By DAVID COLEPravda on the Hudson Published: January 1, 2013

.

IN the days following the Newtown massacre the nation’s newspapers were filled with heart-wrenching pictures of the innocent victims. The slaughter was unimaginably shocking. But the broader tragedy of gun violence is felt mostly not in leafy suburbs, but in America’s inner cities.

The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.

Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims.

The same is true in other cities. In 2011, 80 percent of the 324 people killed in Philadelphia were killed by guns, and three-quarters of the victims were black.

Racial disparities in gun violence far outstrip those in almost any other area of life. Black unemployment is double that for whites, as is black infant mortality. But young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men. Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?

The history of gun regulation is inextricably interwoven with race. Some of the nation’s most stringent gun laws emerged in the South after the Civil War, as Southern whites feared what newly freed slaves might do if armed. At the same time, Northerners saw the freed slaves’ right to bear arms as critical to protecting them from the Ku Klux Klan.

In the 1960s, Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party made the gun a central symbol of black power, claiming that “the gun is the only thing that will free us.” On May 2, 1967, taking advantage of California’s lax gun laws, several Panthers marched through the State Capitol in Sacramento carrying raised and loaded weapons, generating widespread news coverage.

The police could do nothing, as the Panthers broke no laws. But three months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law one of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

The urban riots of the late 1960s — combined with rising crime rates and a string of high-profile assassinations — spurred Congress to pass federal gun control laws, banning interstate commerce in guns except for federally licensed dealers and collectors; prohibiting sales to felons, the mentally ill, substance abusers and minors; and expanding licensing requirements.

These laws contain large loopholes, however, and are plainly inadequate to deal with the increased number and lethality of modern weapons. But as long as gun violence largely targets young black men in urban ghettos, the nation seems indifferent. At Newtown, the often all-too-invisible costs of the right to bear arms were made starkly visible — precisely because these weren’t the usual victims. The nation took note, and President Obama has promised reform, though he has not yet made a specific proposal.

Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response.

A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white anxiety as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I hope we are better than that. If the nation were to view the everyday tragedies that befall young black and Latino men in the inner cities with the same sympathy that it has shown for the Newtown victims, there would be a groundswell of support not just for gun law reform, but for much broader measures.

If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough to tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private gun sales or ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures, meaningful reform must include initiatives directed to where gun violence is worst: the inner cities. Aggressive interventions by police and social workers focused on gang gun violence, coupled with economic investment, better schools and more after-school and job training programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce the violence that gun rights entail.

To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill people; indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good conscience keep making young black men pay the cost of our right to bear arms.

David Cole is a professor of constitutional law and criminal justice at the Georgetown University Law Center.

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

"The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city. "

- No. The right to bear arms brings to me the image of the Bill of Rights, all of which are amendable. Substitute "constitutional rights" for "gun rights". Why do these anti-rights zealots want to teach constitutional law; yet ignore Article V, the amendment process?

"Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related...African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims."

- Chicago has among the strictest gun laws in the country, and the highest gun crime rate. WHY?

"Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?"

- Where did that come from, is he a law professor or an MSNBC host? I would love to see his writings that plea us to shut down abortion 'rights' that hit blacks with similar disproportionality. Those deaths are FAR more preventable.

"Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response."

- Good point - if you believe the borders are sealed and the war on drugs was a success.

- Liberal incoherence. We don't have poverty in these communities. We have dependency. We have hugely expensive programs that don't even look at unintended consequences. Poverty is the lack of wealth. We have widespread failure of an underclass to pursue the productive activities that lead to wealth creation. Indifference to poverty is when you support paying people to stay out of productive work, away from personal responsibility while selectively stomping out other rights like personal security, property rights and keeping the fruits of your labor.

U.S. MARINE’S SCATHING RESPONSE TO SEN. FEINSTEIN’S GUN CONTROL PROPOSAL: ‘I AM NOT YOUR SUBJECT. I AM THE MAN WHO KEEPS YOU FREE’

Posted on January 2, 2013 at 7:30pm by Jason Howerton

(CNN iReport)One U.S. Marine was more than a little displeased with California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s draconian gun control proposal, which includes an assault weapons ban and provisions on handguns and even “grandfathered weapons.”

The letter, written by U.S. Marine Joshua Boston, was titled “No ma’am” and was first posted on CNN iReport on Dec. 27. The letter has since gone viral and has been shared extensively on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, as it seemingly has resonated with a segment of the American population.

Read Boston’s entire “No ma’am” letter below and then share it with others:

Senator Dianne Feinstein,I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,

Joshua Boston Cpl,United States Marine Corps2004-2012

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Who Pays for the Right to Bear Arms?By DAVID COLEPravda on the Hudson Published: January 1, 2013

.

IN the days following the Newtown massacre the nation’s newspapers were filled with heart-wrenching pictures of the innocent victims. The slaughter was unimaginably shocking. But the broader tragedy of gun violence is felt mostly not in leafy suburbs, but in America’s inner cities.

The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.

Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims.

The same is true in other cities. In 2011, 80 percent of the 324 people killed in Philadelphia were killed by guns, and three-quarters of the victims were black.

Racial disparities in gun violence far outstrip those in almost any other area of life. Black unemployment is double that for whites, as is black infant mortality. But young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men. Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?

The history of gun regulation is inextricably interwoven with race. Some of the nation’s most stringent gun laws emerged in the South after the Civil War, as Southern whites feared what newly freed slaves might do if armed. At the same time, Northerners saw the freed slaves’ right to bear arms as critical to protecting them from the Ku Klux Klan.

In the 1960s, Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party made the gun a central symbol of black power, claiming that “the gun is the only thing that will free us.” On May 2, 1967, taking advantage of California’s lax gun laws, several Panthers marched through the State Capitol in Sacramento carrying raised and loaded weapons, generating widespread news coverage.

The police could do nothing, as the Panthers broke no laws. But three months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law one of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

The urban riots of the late 1960s — combined with rising crime rates and a string of high-profile assassinations — spurred Congress to pass federal gun control laws, banning interstate commerce in guns except for federally licensed dealers and collectors; prohibiting sales to felons, the mentally ill, substance abusers and minors; and expanding licensing requirements.

These laws contain large loopholes, however, and are plainly inadequate to deal with the increased number and lethality of modern weapons. But as long as gun violence largely targets young black men in urban ghettos, the nation seems indifferent. At Newtown, the often all-too-invisible costs of the right to bear arms were made starkly visible — precisely because these weren’t the usual victims. The nation took note, and President Obama has promised reform, though he has not yet made a specific proposal.

Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response.

A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white anxiety as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I hope we are better than that. If the nation were to view the everyday tragedies that befall young black and Latino men in the inner cities with the same sympathy that it has shown for the Newtown victims, there would be a groundswell of support not just for gun law reform, but for much broader measures.

If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough to tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private gun sales or ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures, meaningful reform must include initiatives directed to where gun violence is worst: the inner cities. Aggressive interventions by police and social workers focused on gang gun violence, coupled with economic investment, better schools and more after-school and job training programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce the violence that gun rights entail.

To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill people; indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good conscience keep making young black men pay the cost of our right to bear arms.

David Cole is a professor of constitutional law and criminal justice at the Georgetown University Law Center.

IMHO David Cole is partially right.........And wrong when he invokes poverty as the reason for the high homicide rates in certain US populations. Poverty alone does not create violence, and no reputable study has shown a legitimate correlation between poverty and violent crime.

The root of violence in African American communities is associated with poverty, but not caused by it.......the dirty secret is that US drug policies, not poverty, not guns, are the direct link to the extraordinarily high homicide rates in African American communities in particular and the US in general........Specifically the way in which the 'drug war' has been fought since the early 1960's.........

Drug laws and law enforcement targeted black drug dealers with often violent tactics that would never have been tolerated in white communities, incarcerating large numbers of poor blacks in numbers vastly disproportionate to white criminals, and the result was the institutionalization and indoctrination into violent prison culture of generations of black men.......Leaving generations of black families broken, and generations of black children without fathers.

The result of that indoctrination in to prison gang culture? The bringing of that culture back to the streets where it was adopted as violent streets gang culture by the children of those men.........A culture that has perpetuated along with the illegal blackmarket drug trade.

If we want to know what has made America the violent country it is today..........One thing and one thing only........75% of the homicide rate of this country is a direct or indirect consequence of the drug war.........And if we weren't warehousing record numbers of Americans since 1992 with mandatory minimum sentences we'd be seeing higher rates than we are now. Without the 75% of the homicides attributed to the drug war, we'd have a homicide rate equal to Great Britains..........1.4 per 100,000..........A rate you see in the US among groups of similar socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds..........Britain is 92% European heritage..........So is the state of Wyoming, Vermont and New Hampshire, all have lax gun laws, all have populations 92% give or take European........All with homicide rates of 1.4 per 100,000 or less.

Poverty is a contributor..........But not the cause. There are plenty of places in the US with high poverty rates and low homicide rates. Brownsville, Tx is a prime example of a medium sized American city with 92% hispanic minority population, high poverty and a homicide rate actually BELOW the national average....Poverty doesn't drive homicide rates..........In a general sense, a marginalized population that perceives itself victimized by the larger population and viewing the official law enforcement/judicial system as illegitimate correlates to high homicide rates.

One can examine hispanic communities to really see the dichotomy of American society......In places like Brownsville, with long established community ties, violence is low........In places where newly transplanted Hispanic immigrants find themselves in conflict with the same black communities and gang culture that have resulted from the drug war, we see extraordinarily high homicide rates. In areas along the US/Mexican border along major drug distribution routes, large influxes of drug money has driven extraordinarly high homicide and violence rates.

South Africa may be the best example of this........A larger marginalized minority (in their case a majority) population and a homicide rate over 10 TIMES the US rate.

Nice post sgtmac. Valid points for sure on the effects of the failed war on drugs. Your final point though is what I think is the key to it all: "...the destruction of the black family is the root of the violence..."

It is hard to establish cause and effect relationships. My view is that destruction of the inner-city family, too often black, was accelerated by our welfare state that often required removal of the father in order to qualify for the 'assistance'. Mothers had babies that guaranteed subsistence checks. 'Fathers' had idle time on their hands in place of the responsibility of supporting family. Able bodied men didn't get the assistance that we pay a single woman with children. The quickest and easiest appearing money in the neighborhood is in drugs, and illegal trafficking is enforced with violence.

The Heritage Foundation has done some excellent research on this - specifically Bill Bennett and Thomas Sowell. The black family unit used to be among the MOST stable subgroups in the country - prior to the welfare state instituted in the 1960s. It was at that point that the alarming increase in single-parent households (mothers without husbands) started, and with it the dramatic increase in crime among these inner-city blacks and other minorities.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Quite contrary to our point of view around here (and the description of the Australian data is contrary to what I thought I knew , , ,) . Still, if this argument is being made, we need to have our thinking in place.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHALPublished: January 5, 2013

IN the wake of the tragic shooting deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month, the National Rifle Association proposed that the best way to protect schoolchildren was to place a guard — a “good guy with a gun” — in every school, part of a so-called National School Shield Emergency Response Program.

Indeed, the N.R.A.’s solution to the expansion of gun violence in America has been generally to advocate for the more widespread deployment and carrying of guns.

I recently visited some Latin American countries that mesh with the N.R.A.’s vision of the promised land, where guards with guns grace every office lobby, storefront, A.T.M., restaurant and gas station. It has not made those countries safer or saner.

Despite the ubiquitous presence of “good guys” with guns, countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela have some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

“A society that is relying on guys with guns to stop violence is a sign of a society where institutions have broken down,” said Rebecca Peters, former director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. “It’s shocking to hear anyone in the United States considering a solution that would make it seem more like Colombia.”

As guns proliferate, legally and illegally, innocent people often seem more terrorized than protected.

In Guatemala, riding a public bus is a risky business. More than 500 bus drivers have been killed in robberies since 2007, leading InSight Crime, which tracks organized crime in the Americas, to call it “the most dangerous profession on the planet.” And when bullets start flying, everyone is vulnerable: in 2010 the onboard tally included 155 drivers, 54 bus assistants, 71 passengers and 14 presumed criminals. Some were killed by the robbers’ bullets and some by gun-carrying passengers.

Scientific studies have consistently found that places with more guns have more violent deaths, both homicides and suicides. Women and children are more likely to die if there’s a gun in the house. The more guns in an area, the higher the local suicide rates. “Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “There is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all.”

After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. Before then, Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent, and there have been no mass killings, said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.

Distinctive factors contribute to the high rates of violent crime in Latin America. Many countries in the region had recent civil wars, resulting in a large number of weapons in circulation. Drug- and gang-related violence is widespread. “It’s dangerous to make too tight a link between the availability of weapons and homicide rates,” said Jeremy McDermott, a co-director of InSight Crime who is based in Medellín, Colombia. “There are lots of other variables.”

Still, he said that the recent sharp increase in homicides in Venezuela could be in part explained by the abundance of arms there. Although the government last spring imposed a one-year ban on importing weapons, there had previously been a plentiful influx from Russia. There is a Kalashnikov plant in the country.

In 2011, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras led the world in homicides, with 91.6 per 100,000 people. But rates were also alarmingly high in El Salvador (69.1), Jamaica (40.9), Colombia (31.4) and Guatemala (38.5). Venezuela’s was 45.1 in 2010 but is expected to be close to to 80 this year. The United States’ rate is about 5.

THOUGH many of these countries have restrictions on gun ownership, enforcement is lax. According to research by Flacso, the Guatemalan Social Science Academy, illegal guns far outnumber legal weapons in Central America.

All that has spawned a thriving security industry — the good guys with guns that grace every street corner — though experts say it is often unclear if their presence is making crime better or worse. In many countries, the armed guards have only six weeks of training.

Guatemala, with approximately 20,000 police officers, has 41,000 registered private security guards and an estimated 80,000 who are working without authorization. “To put people with guns who are not accountable or trained in places where there are lots of innocent people is just dangerous,” Ms. Peters said, noting that lethal force is used to deter minor crimes like shoplifting.

Indeed, even as some Americans propose expanding our gun culture into elementary schools, some Latin American cities are trying to rein in theirs. Bogotá’s new mayor, Gustavo Petro, has forbidden residents to carry weapons on streets, in cars or in any public space since last February, and the murder rate has dropped 50 percent to a 27-year low. He said, “Guns are not a defense, they are a risk.”

William Godnick, coordinator of the Public Security Program at the United Nations Regional Center for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, said that United Nations studies in Central America showed that people who used a gun to defend against an armed assault were far more likely to be injured or killed than if they had no weapon.

Post-Sandy Hook, gun groups in the United States are now offering teachers firearms training. But do I really want my kid’s teachers packing a weapon?

“If you’re living in a ‘Mad Max’ world, where criminals have free rein and there’s no government to stop them, then I’d want to be armed,” said Dr. Hemenway of Harvard. “But we’re not in that circumstance. We’re a developed, stable country.”

Elisabeth Rosenthal is a physician and a science reporter for The New York Times.

An Open Letter to Dr. Janet Rosenbaum (Swiss Facts vs American Propaganda)finemrespice.com ^ | 19 December, 2012 01/05/2013 8:40:20 PM PST Dr. Rosembaum: It appears today that your efforts to publicize your research ("Gun Utopias? Firearm Access and Ownership in Israel and Switzerland," Journal of Public Health Policy 33, p. 47 (2012)) have accelerated. The most recent showcase for your paper and the concepts that underlie it happens to be Foreign Policy ("A League of Our Own," Foreign Policy (December 19, 2012)) but Ezra Klein showcased your research in an interview for his Washington-Post sponsored Wonkblog some days before ("Mythbusting: Israel and Switzerland are not gun-toting utopias," Wonkblog (December 14, 2012)). It is unfortunate then that the body of your research on Switzerland can only be described as "shoddy," at best. At worst it appears more like raw academic fraud. Here in Switzerland we resent being pressed into forced labor in the salt mines of America's rapidly devolving culture wars, but this would be somewhat easier service to tolerate if your representation of Swiss law, statistics on firearms related deaths and homicides in Switzerland, and Swiss culture were remotely accurate. They are not. Not even close. Moreover, it is the considered opinion of finem respice that you know it. By your own admission your conclusions about Swiss firearms law are based on your own translation of the French and German versions of the "Bundesgesetz über Waffen, Waffenzubehör und Munition" ("Swiss Federal Law on Weapons, Weapon Accessories and Ammunition"), which your research cites repeatedly. Based on the conclusions you arrive at in your research it seems apparent that your foreign language skills leave much to be desired. Almost nothing at all that you claim as fact about Swiss firearms law is true. Literally, no material point you have been making in public (3 month permit renewals, proof of "need" requirements to purchase firearms) in support of the premise that Swiss firearms regulation is "strict gun control" is correct. Your command of Swiss gun violence statistics are equally flawed. In fact, Swiss gun homicides stood at 0.2389 per 100,000 residents in 2010. This figure is among the lowest in the world. In Europe it is effectively indistinguishable from the rates in France and Denmark, and lower than Finland, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a particularly interesting case, being small and culturally fairly homogenous (as Switzerland). But there the similarities end. Luxembourg ranks 147th out of 178 countries for the rate of private gun ownership in the Small Arms Survey of 2007 (which you cite repeatedly in your research as an authority and which ranks Switzerland 3rd of 178 countries in the very same chart). Moreover, despite your flawed understanding of Swiss gun law, gun control measures in Luxembourg are generally stricter than Switzerland. This is true of most if not all EU members, as they have generally aggressively implemented the European Council Directive on "Control of the Acquisition and Possession of Weapons" from 1991. Italy is also an interesting case with victims of homicide by firearm per 100,000 residents of 0.36 in 2009 (the latest year for which figures are available from the World Health Organization's "European Detailed Mortality Database"). That was almost 17% higher than Switzerland that year and is 33.6% higher than Switzerland's current rate. And where does Italy rank in rate of firearms ownership? 55th of 178 countries according to the same Small Arms Survey data from 2007. In fact, despite your absurd claims that ownership of firearms in Switzerland is "rare," the same data shows that Swiss civilians are better armed than the populations of Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Kosovo, Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya, Mexico, Guatemala, South Africa, Pakistan, Jordan, Brazil, Nicaragua, Iran, El Salvador, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Laos, Chad, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Perhaps now is a good moment to remind you once again that you cite the same report from which these figures are drawn repeatedly in your research? Of course, it is habit among lazy scholars to attribute high rates of private ownership of firearms in Switzerland to the "militia." Unfortunately for those who argue this point, it is demonstrably false. Admittedly, it is often difficult to get a handle on the total number of privately held firearms in Switzerland. This is because not all firearms have to be registered here. Still, back in 2011 to inform citizens on the facts regarding firearms in Switzerland for the upcoming referendum, the Bundesamt für Statistik (The Swiss Federal Statistics Agency) published a series of figures on firearms, firearms deaths, and firearms violence. The agency estimated the total number of privately held firearms at 2,000,000 (though your source, the Small Arms Survey of 2007 cites the higher figure of 3,500,000 for its main calculations and suggests that figure might even be as high as 4,500,000). Of these: Around 260,000 firearms are select-fire Sturmgewehr 90s (the "SIG 550" in the civilian market) held by members of the Swiss armed forces in connection with their current military service obligations. This is between 7.43% (using your source, the Small Arms Survey of 2007) and 13% (using the Bundesamt für Statistik estimates). If one takes the high end of the Small Arms Survey of 2007 the figure sinks to 5.78% of the total. In short, firearms ownership owing to current militia service is a small fraction of total firearms in private hands in Switzerland. These are not secret figures by any means. One need only know how to download a spreadsheet from the official Bundesamt für Statistik site (although that would require a working knowledge of German or French, or the effort to walk to your local linguistics department and ask for a translation) or download the Small Arms Survey report from 2007 (which you obviously already had access to as it is cited in your work). In the case of the former, the crime reports and population counts in Switzerland going back 10 years or more are readily available. These form the basis of the statistics cited here and should have influenced your research, though perhaps you would not have been able to talk Foreign Policy into giving you a four-page spread with the boring conclusions vis-a-vis Switzerland that would have resulted. On reflection, so contorting are the intellectual acrobatics you go through to avoid these facts it becomes difficult to see anything other than academic malfeasance in support of advocacy (rather than science) at work here. But mere data cherry-picking is not the limit of the flaws in your arguments. Many "scholars" in this area like to conflate "gun violence" with "deaths by firearm." You have been no exception. In fact, there is a strong argument that you have been among the worst offenders in this regard over the last 10 days. So let's look at total firearms related deaths in Switzerland, shall we? At 3.0297 per 100,000 residents in 2010, total firearms related deaths in Switzerland ranks somewhat higher with respect to her peers. These figures are the sum of accidents and suicides, however. Using them as indicators of "gun violence" is to torture the definition of that term beyond recognition. Even this higher rate is, however, on par with France, and below Finland, and Canada. Resorting again to the Bundesamt für Statistik we find that suicides account for a large part of these figures, but suicide by firearm is small as a percentage of total suicides. One of the effects of having a very low level of overall fatalities not due to natural causes is that small figures have big effects on ratios and percentages. For the last five years total suicides by firearm have ranged from a high of 264 (in 2007) to a low of 222 (in 2010) or between 18.2% and 22.9% of the total. As a method, "hanging" beats firearms by several percentage points every year, "poisoning" exceeded firearms by as much as 12 percentage points from 2002 to 2009 (when assisted suicide figures were removed from the totals- the Swiss do not generally consider these "crime" figures, you understand) and alternates as the higher figure with "other methods" in the last five years. As a policy matter, even if you cut suicides by firearm in Switzerland by 25% and assumed that those prevented never resorted to other methods (a highly dubious assumption) you are only talking about 55-65 suicides per year. You have to format excel to show six decimal places to see that this is 0.000062% of the population of Switzerland. Perhaps this is a Swiss attitude, but curtailing the rights of nearly 9 million residents to prevent 0.000062% of the population from voluntarily ending their own lives seems slightly excessive. Finally, there is the matter of your gross misrepresentation of trends in Swiss gun control, which you have repeatedly alleged is on the rise, or that Switzerland is "moving towards" greater control, whatever that means. Here your conduct has been so egregious it becomes difficult to believe that major American Universities have played host to your activities. Any serious scholar of Swiss firearms policy would have known that in 2011 the Swiss held a popular referendum calling for more gun control, supported in large measure by the same organizations which pressed the Switzerland to join the European Union (a bullet Switzerland thankfully dodged). The gun-control measure was thoroughly trounced. Switzerland requires referendums to pass both the popular vote by a majority and also carry a majority of the kantons. The referendum lost the popular vote by 12.6 points and carried only 35% of the kantonal electoral votes. Contrary to your absurd suggestions, gun control advocates have been oddly silent in Switzerland since the referendum. Yesterday, finem respice called for you to retract your paper and publicly correct your flawed representations of Swiss firearms law, and firearm homicide and death rates in Switzerland. Now that you have been made aware of the real and material flaws in the body of your research that pertains to Switzerland it would be difficult to regard as anything other than academic dishonesty a refusal by you to publicly correct your position. Accordingly, and as finem respice indicated yesterday, if such a correction and retraction is not forthcoming within 10 days finem respice will formally submit its findings in support of charges of academic dishonesty to the University of Maryland, the institution you were affiliated with when the instant research was conducted, the State University of New York, where you are currently an Assistant Professor, and the Journal of Public Health Policy, which published your flawed study. Of course, finem respice awaits your prompt and comprehensive reply.

Nice post sgtmac. Valid points for sure on the effects of the failed war on drugs. Your final point though is what I think is the key to it all: "...the destruction of the black family is the root of the violence..."

It is hard to establish cause and effect relationships. My view is that destruction of the inner-city family, too often black, was accelerated by our welfare state that often required removal of the father in order to qualify for the 'assistance'. Mothers had babies that guaranteed subsistence checks. 'Fathers' had idle time on their hands in place of the responsibility of supporting family. Able bodied men didn't get the assistance that we pay a single woman with children. The quickest and easiest appearing money in the neighborhood is in drugs, and illegal trafficking is enforced with violence.

There are so many angles present that one could spend years studying the interlocking roots of the problem.......One thing is certain, however, the dynamics making comparing Canada, UK and Australia to the US apples and bananas........Because we don't have a violent crime problem, we have a very specialized problem that they don't remotely have within their demographic. The UK is 92% European descent, comparable to the State of Wyoming, Vermont or New Hampshire, who have homicide rates of 1.4 per 100,000, 1.1 per 100,000 and 1.0 per 100,000, respectively, IDENTICAL to the UK's 1.4 per 100,000...........Comparing apples to apples we find the homicide rates are IDENTICAL, demographic to demographic, regardless whether it's unarmed UK or heavily armed (60% of the population armed) Wyoming........When people try to kill each other they succeed....Heavily armed folks are no more likely to try to kill each other because they are heavily armed than unarmed folks.........Attacking the tools do nothing to solve the reason why they are trying, and hence, don't solve the problem.

Though Alex Jones is I think a bit too belligerent here, he makes his points extremely well, and cuts off Morgan at the knees, as he deserves. Sad that we don't have any journalists in the mainstream media willing to do the same:

The decision on whether anyone should be prosecuted after “Meet the Press” host David Gregory appeared to hold a high-capacity ammunition magazine on national television now belongs to the District’s Office of the Attorney General, authorities said Tuesday.

In an e-mail, a spokeswoman for D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said her department has “completed the investigation into this matter, and the case has been presented to the OAG for a determination of the prosecutorial merit of the case.”--------

The NRA as well as WSJ editorial board and some otherson the right think prosecution is a bad idea because it is a silly law. The reaction on the left is mostly silence - what can you say to stupidity. The President's reaction was to be Gregory's star guest on the very next show, while the 'investigation' was proceeding.

What it really illustrates is what a worthless argument Gregory was putting forward, that we might reduce shootings by disarming law-abiding citizens - while demonstrating on national television how easy it is for everyone not concerned with the carefully legislated details of the laws to get any gun, ammo or magazine that they want.

President Obama may soon act unilaterally to curtail Americans’ right to keep and bear arms and impose a new national firearms policy without congressional approval.

Spurred on by the Newtown, Connecticut schoolhouse massacre last month that took 26 lives, Obama could restrict, perhaps even abolish, private gun ownership with the stroke of his auto-pen.

Second Amendment backers are justifiably angry after Vice President Joe Biden spoke yesterday about ways to curb violent gun-related crime. He suggested that the president may take swift, decisive action without congressional approval.

“The president is going to act,” said Biden who is heading up a task force that is supposed to make policy recommendations to Obama later this month. The vice president reportedly “guaranteed” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that President Obama would push through sweeping firearms restrictions before February.

“There are executive orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

Biden added, “As the president said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking. But I’m convinced we can affect the well-being of millions of Americans and take thousands of people out of harm’s way if we act responsibly.”

“I want to make it clear that we are not going to get caught up in the notion that unless we can do everything, we’re going to do nothing,” Biden said. “It’s critically important we act.”

In normal times the prospect of gun confiscation might be next to nil, the stuff of conspiracy theories, but in the age of Obama so many bad things seem possible. With the country in a sour mood, the economy stuck in a ditch, and a transformational Marxist in the White House, terrible outcomes that previously appeared farfetched now could become possible.

Consider that Obama is a devout ideologue who deep down doesn’t believe Americans should be allowed to own guns. He’s a longtime supporter of gun confiscation but when he began running for president he began claiming to be a supporter of the Second Amendment in order not to scare away moderate voters.

He has Freudian-slipped from time to time. In his first presidential campaign he mocked small-town Americans as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion,” paraphrasing Saul Alinsky’s attacks on ordinary Americans.

Consider also that Obama is a narcissistic president with a messiah complex who began his political career in the living room of unrepentant bomb-detonating terrorists.

Since winning the 2008 election Obama has: refused to enforce laws he dislikes including laws cracking down on the voter fraud Democrats often need to win elections; routinely assaulted the Bill of Rights; decreed a partial immigration amnesty after it was rejected by Congress; ignored court orders; recess-appointed high government officials when Congress wasn’t actually in recess; attempted to intimidate Supreme Court justices; kept a Nixon-style enemies’ list and labeled his detractors in the Tea Party movement as terrorists; waged class warfare and encouraged racial animosity; presided over the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal that provided weapons to Mexican drug cartels; nationalized large swaths of private industry; ignored politically-inspired violence carried out by his allies; unilaterally moved to impose economy-killing carbon emission controls; openly disdained entrepreneurs; waged war without congressional approval; accepted illegal foreign campaign contributions; tried to get a governor to appoint his crony (Valerie Jarrett) to fill the Senate seat he vacated; said police “acted stupidly” when they dared to arrest his personal friend; turned a blind eye to rampant corruption in his administration; and forced health care providers to violate their religious beliefs.

Now Obama is apparently considering minting a $1 trillion platinum coin in order to evade the congressionally imposed national debt limit.

This is the behavior of a Third World banana republic caudillo, not the supposed leader of the free world.

Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said the president’s proposal to go it alone sounded like “dictatorship” to him. “The Founding Fathers never envisioned Executive Orders being used to restrict our Constitutional rights,” he said in a press release. “We live in a republic, not a dictatorship.”

Two unusually insightful posts on the micro-blogging website Twitter summed up the public’s anxiety at Obama’s overreach and imperial approach to policymaking.

A user with the handle @siftyboones tweeted, “My family will not be reduced to docile livestock at the whim of the government. The End.”

Any executive order taking Americans’ guns away would be a brutal assault on the rule of law. It could also lead to violent civil unrest in a nation founded upon a healthy distrust of governmental power.

Yesterday NRA president David Keene reaffirmed that the purpose of the Second Amendment to the Constitution was to prevent tyranny and deter foreign invaders.

“The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunters. Hunters use firearms. Hunters have every right to use firearms, as do target shooters, as do gun collectors, as do others,” said Keene.

“The fact of the matter is that the Second Amendment has to do with personal and national defense. It was put into the Constitution by the Founders who considered it as important indeed as the First Amendment.”

As Charles Krauthammer waxed eloquent on Fox News Channel last night:

We have a 200-year history and culture of gun ownership. And we have a Second Amendment and we have a system that believes that the rights, the Second Amendment, in other words, predate the republic and the point of having a government, as in the Declaration [of Independence], is to secure the rights. In Britain you have no such right, the government will control gun ownership so unless you’re willing to confiscate, which would be unconstitutional and that would cause an insurrection in the country –Australia did– these things are not going to have an effect, except at the margins and that’s the tragedy here.

Although many law enforcement personnel would probably refuse to enforce something as profoundly un-American as a gun-confiscation diktat, it is not at all clear where Obama would get the legal authority to unilaterally impose new gun control measures. Even liberal constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe concedes that –at a minimum– the Second Amendment safeguards the individual right of Americans to “possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes.”

The Supreme Court has blown away gun grabbers in recent years. In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the high court struck down the draconian ban on gun ownership that had long been in effect in the nation’s capital. The court found for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, affirming what serious constitutional scholars had known for years.

The court followed up in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, making it clear that the individual right to keep and bear arms acknowledged in the Heller ruling applies to the states as well. That 2010 decision quashed a Chicago city ordinance banning the possession of handguns.

Complicating matters further for Obama, it turns out then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was correct when she said to lawmakers in 2010, “we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

A new report from Breitbart.com indicates that a provision is buried in the Obamacare legislation that protects Second Amendment rights. The clause states that the government is not allowed to collect “any information relating to the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed that he added the legislative language in order to keep the National Rifle Association out of the legislative battle over Obamacare. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

Will any of these legal concerns matter to President Obama who regards the Constitution at best as a living document and at worst as an inconvenience?

As gun and ammunition sales skyrocket nationwide, it is clear the public isn’t taking the chance that Obama will feel restrained by the laws of the land.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl, who had infiltrated and joined the Weather Underground, described their post-revolution governing plans for the United States in this video taken from the 1982 documentary "No Place to Hide." The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism.

Here's a transcript of his interview:

I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.

And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.

The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.

I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

I've seen some VERY heated responses to this today by people who lack confidence that we remain a nation of laws.

Though this is "just" a cartoon, it skates pretty close to the edge of the legal ice , , , http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/01/10/

It's kind of a scary time.......For the first time in my life I am actually concerned that the rantings of folks like Alex Jones might come to pass in some fashion or another (despite the fact that I still think he's nuts).......Why would the VP invoke the notion of Executive Order on the subject unless they are trying to provoke some kind of response? I seriously get the impression that they not only want to pass laws, they want to ensure that we know they are in charge and they can do whatever they want. There is an arrogant swaggering quality to all of this.

In fact, having browsed some of the forums, the leftists are on there trying to provoke 'treason talk' with jibes of 'bring it on, I can't wait to see them drop JDAMS on your heads'........It's all taking on a rather 'Belfast' quality.